


Change

by SleepsWithCoyotes



Category: Saiyuki (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Archival Fic, Challenge Response, Don't copy to another site, M/M, bystander fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-11
Updated: 2020-07-11
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:28:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25209247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SleepsWithCoyotes/pseuds/SleepsWithCoyotes
Summary: There was something wrong with the boy Genjo Sanzo brought back from the mountains.
Relationships: Genjo Sanzo/Son Goku
Comments: 2
Kudos: 59





	Change

**Author's Note:**

> Back to working on moving stuff over from the spambot...this one's pre-2007, for a wordfic challenge on my journal: Elihice gave me "Sanzo/Goku" and "inevitability."

There was something wrong with the boy Genjo Sanzo brought back from the mountains, something deeply wrong. Genjo Sanzo seemed blind or indifferent to that wrongness himself, but the signs of it were myriad. Perhaps the holiness of a Sanzo was proof against inhuman mischief, but the monastery itself wasn't so fortunate.

The boy was _everywhere_ , haunting the kitchen and peering into cellars, scrambling in the garden and the woods that surrounded the monastery like the monkey his master named him. That, at least, was normal, though it was a pity the solemnity of his surroundings hadn't imparted the slightest sense of reverence. Even those alarming yellow eyes could be overlooked, so long as one didn't stumble upon them in a dark corridor in the middle of the night. And the child--if it was a child--was cheerful, always cheerful, no matter how hard they tried to teach him a proper air of gravity. No one had ever seen the boy Goku truly angry, not on his own behalf.

But he defended Sanzo's honor and person with the dedication of a lover.

The master who trained the novices had seen it, passing through town to arrange for supplies. Ink and parchment were always at a premium in the monastery, and his path took him past several taverns, straight through the heart of the market district. He was sure he'd mistaken the direction of Sanzo's footsteps--one of the highest priests in Buddhism would never head so determinedly _to_ a bar--but it was definitely Goku chattering at the man's heels, holding a skewer of fried _meat_ in one hand and never a penny to his name. And then there was the drunken man coming out of the bar, noticing Genjo Sanzo and _leering_. It was disgusting, and the training master would have marched over to remove that unclean hand from Sanzo's arm if nothing else, only by then Goku was a blur, a punching, kicking whirlwind that left a man three times his size bleeding unconscious in the road.

Goku had only been dogging Sanzo's heels for three months. He'd been cleaned up, properly dressed, his hair almost tamed, but he was only a little boy. A little boy that could easily kill.

It wasn't to be last time that happened, and on the one hand, a bodyguard was only good sense in such uncertain times, no matter how unnatural. On the other hand, who knew when such a creature would turn on its master? Genjo Sanzo wasn't notorious for his _patience_ , after all. The entire monastery watched for that day, wary of the innocence the boy projected and the killing strength it masked.

Goku smiled his simple-minded smile, understanding that they didn't like him but not why, the way he failed to understand so much else. The way he fought for Sanzo, one would think...but no. Perhaps he was the perfect companion for Sanzo after all, as Goku had no notion of what two people could do together, and Sanzo disliked everyone impartially, was known to break the fingers of those who touched him when he wasn't expecting it.

Inevitability wasn't a concept much embraced in the monastery. Karma made its own demands, but the point of one's karma was that it could be _changed_. Suffering, experience, and growth altered the balance of it over slow lifetimes or in a single blinding instant, and if the path to enlightenment was long, at least there were options along the way.

When the Three Aspects dispatched their priest and his three followers to India, it wasn't inevitable that they would succeed, though they did. It wasn't certain that they would return to Chang-An, but all four of them arrived just after dawn on the first real day of summer. It wasn't even _likely_ that they would have changed in any way, and to some degree they hadn't--the halfbreed was still smirkingly blasphemous, the murderer insincere and self-effacing, the priest still irritable and his inhuman foundling sticking to him like glue--

But when Goku grinned a little too cheekily over something his master said, Genjo Sanzo reached out and smacked the back of his skull open-handed, almost a caress. Though the blow tilted Goku's head forward, it didn't dim the blinding grin one jot.

The fan didn't make an appearance until the halfbreed sauntered over to the pair and, with a few lewd remarks, broadcast what the rest of the monastery already knew.

Later in the day, someone would mention the inevitable and others would nod wisely, but they all knew better. It was their calling to know better. Things changed or things stayed the same, and everyone eventually died from one or the other, but true change was a matter of choice, of will. If Genjo Sanzo had made his choice, then that, as they said, was that.

Goku likely wasn't as dangerous as he seemed anyway.


End file.
